Fans, Fraggles and Fatigue

I dozed off early last night, and didn't quite feel up to updating the blog until tonight. That meant I could spend some time on it throughout the day, and not struggle with it late Sunday night.


March 9 - HOW long have I been on the payroll?

I forgot to mention in last week's blog that last week marked my ninth year with MMart - hard to believe. It's the longest I've ever been with any employer, though looking back at my various terms with companies, I do tend to be at places in terms of years, not months like some. I've worked in fast food, retail, and entertainment... and have yet to find my niche, really. I have to say though, that my experience with MMart, while quite stressful at times, has provided me with a window into human social interaction - my ability to judge people's intent based on things other than words has been honed to a fine edge. While I claim no ability to read minds, I do find it easy now to tell when someone is not being truthful, or to tell when folks are presenting a face different from the one they normally wear. I've learned many things about myself as well, and generally find that something new presents itself every day of the week, though not always what I would wish to learn each day.

Modern careers are hardly that though; the notion of people spending 20+ years with one company no longer seems to be the major factor for employers. Instead, contract workers and temporary employment for workers seem to be the way things are leaning these days. I am not sure this is for the better, but in today's economic times companies have to be able to be flexible, and having the ability to quickly pare down a workforce is sadly something that many a company thinks necessary. Not to mention that today's jobs are increasingly bad for your health.

March 10 - Nerd Nesting

After enjoying living on my own for a spell back in university, as well as for my first year here in BC, I am back in the fold again, as most of you know already. While it was my choice, it is not how I plan to spend the rest of my life... at least until such time as I figure out what's wrong with my plumbing, among other things. Thoughts about living at home have been running through my head incessantly these last few months, preying on my mind about choices, of my future and things as yet to do.

Still, I am here, and will remain until I leave again. There are many people out there who have never left in the first place; some discussion on that topic can be found here, and is worth reading for the many opinions people present on the topic.

One sometimes finds oneself far from where you had pictured years ago; in my case, I am thousands of miles away from the city of my birth, away from friends and almost all of my family. I had thought I would be working as a journalist, or as a writer for a gaming company... heck, at one point I wanted to be an astronaut, like many a boy dreamed of. Now I find myself literally on the shores of a new land, starting anew in some ways and backtracking in others. Such is life.

March 11 - New Muziic

Anyone remember the old days of Napster, when the RIAA was tearing out its collective hair trying to figure out a way to stop people from illegally trading music? Well, those days are long past, in that peer-to-peer networks like Bittorrent have decentralized file sharing, making it more difficult( but far from impossible )for legal action to be taken against individuals.

But why take the illegal route? A recent newcomer to the online music scene is, well, Muziic, which is a collaboration between a father and his son. Best of it, in addition to being 100% free, it is 100% legal, as the player uses YouTube to build its file list. Try it out, you may just enjoy it... like I enjoyed Pandora, before legal issues meant that program's use was restricted to IP addresses within the USA only.

March 12 - Bust and Boom

I went in to Subway today and received a small disappointment: no more Daily Specials. I can only surmise that this is a result of the current economy, but to have it manifest in such small things really tweaks my sense of personal.

I did however, find something that had been eluding me for years, something that I had looked for on and off since I saw it on the 'net in the late nineties. I laughed long and loud when I saw it last:

Safety grenades.

Yes, that's right, it's an oxymoron... and it's based off an old Star Trek meme: that of the exploding control console. The ones that go up in a shower of sparks every time there's a battle, tossing red-shirted crewman across compartments and bridges without regard to physics. Read it and laugh, for I am glad that the person who reposted it managed to track it down again for others to enjoy.

Speaking of tracking things down: this was found in a pond recently in England. Is it proof that aliens have landed, or that Doctor Who was based on things not entirely fictional? You decide.

Lastly, good news on the battery front: engineers from MIT have discovered a new way to build batteries. If the research pans out, then it means batteries can be recharged in full in a matter of seconds, not hours, thus solving the major problem with today's high-tech devices: the blasted batteries just don't last.

March 13 - Feeling lucky punk?

Today is the second month in a row with a Friday the 13th, and there's one more coming up in November, for a total of three this year. For some, it is an unlucky day, but for others, luck finds them ... in spades. I try to keep up with news from Niagara, and the rescue today of a jumper over the Falls struck me as proof that dumb luck can be right up there with superstition on days like today.

The unknown can be quite scary, but I've been able to sleep better at night knowing that The SCP Foundation is working hard to keep the world safe. Much like the Men In Black and The Plumbers, it is secret organizations like these that ensure that the world never falls under the influence of things that go bump in the night. Hard to apply for employment though, and one has to wonder about their medical plans... do they include bacta treatment?

Sometimes though, one needs protection from the smaller things in life, like those annoying scratches that build up on one's car over time. Whether from rocks of the road or inconsiderate parking lot passersby, protection has usually meant waxing and polishing a few times a year, as well as trying one of hundreds of scratch-fixing products on the market. Well, it seems that scientists have been busy this week, as a team has come up with self-healing paint for vehicles - rejoice, car owners!

March 14 - Windy like Oz, Dorothy!

Homelessness is a hot-button topic here on Vancouver Island, when people see it every day in downtown Victoria. While Stew Young, the mayor of Langford has often stated that his city will not tolerate homelessness, he does not have a plan for solving the problem other than exporting it to other municipalities. Several people have commented on this policy of late, though again no real solution has been found, for like most cities these days homelessness is on the rise. Alberta has thrown down the gauntlet however, announcing a 3.3 billion-dollar plan to end homelessness in the province within 10 years - quite a challenge, and one the western world will be watching closely.

After work tonight, the winds from the north picked up, blasting across Langford Lake at up to 90 km/h ... which tossed a lot of branches around, though not as badly as when I visited Niagara back in September. I was mainly concerned about the cat-shield I had built for the back deck, to protect the birds who come to the birdfeeder. As you can see from this picture, the setup proved to be rather robust, as it flexed in the winds but did not break under the strain. I'm quite proud of it, as it shows I'm capable of putting something together to meet a need that won't fall apart in the real world.

March 15 - Not a Fan of Meetings

Today is my Saturday - as in, I don't have to go to work, like most people do Mon to Fri. I can't complain really, as I start work most days later than most, at 10:30 or so. I do enjoy watching a few of the new crop of 'toon shows Sundays of late, though I still have a soft spot for my perennial favourite Reboot - it makes me grin to see that it's now a staple of the TeleToon Retro channel, right alongside Superfriends and Fat Albert. Fraggle Rock is on there too, a show I loved watching on Sunday nights down in the family room... the wacky humour and upbeat singing always picked me up for another week at school the next day.

I spent a few hours today replacing all the fans in my Blue Frankenstein PC, as the ones inside had all begin to rattle or simply stopped working due to age. Sadly, while most fans list a MTBF of around 50,000 hours, my experience has been more like 10,000 hours, which equates to about a year of 24/7 operation. Since I leave my PC on to run things like BOINC, this is rather annoying to me, so I will be keeping an eye on these new ones from CoolerMaster - at least they aren't all that expensive. The main benefit is that my PC is now almost completely silent even when running at top speed - the fan noise is faint enough that I can read a book on the couch next to it and not be irritated by the sound.

I had a meeting tonight at work, from 5-8, for all the area managers - I just love meetings on my days off. While I can't of course go into details, the gist of it means more daily stress for myself and others. Every minute of every day at work will be spent at a multitude of tasks, juggling like a madman... already I find it wearing, and I hope that once the tax season slows down then I will be able to catch a breath. As it stands now, I come home every day exhausted, and only the fact that I am able to go to bed early and sleep in has staved off accumulated fatigue. Add that to my plumbing issues, and I begin to dream of vacations more than anything else of late... my pictures of my trips to Mexico and St. Maartens are now making their way across my PC monitor to ease my mind's eye.


All for now... looking forward to Spring next week, I can tell you that! I am not alone in that, I am sure.

Terminators, Taxes and Testing

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the lack of snow in last week's blog: you never know who is listening. Glad to hear from you too, Jen... nice to see you're still dropping by the blog!


March 2 - Monday Madness

Ergh.... man, today was BUSY at work, so much so that at the end of felt like I had jogged in place for the entire time. Which, considering I worked almost 10 hours, was really wearing on me... yadda yadda, I know, everyone has to work. When you're alone though, there's nobody to complain to, so you have to suck it up and do your best despite the crowds of people who of a sudden all decide to show up within ten minutes of each other... damned strange, that. I've also noticed that when it's sunny out, MANY people seem to let that decide them if they've been waffling on whether or not to go anywhere. "Sun's shining? Hooray, let's head out then!" And where do you think they stop first? MMart, for cash, of course... *grins* Keeps me in a job though, so that's good in MY books!

A lot of people seem to confuse Vancouver Island with the City of Vancouver, especially when told I live in Victoria( Langford now, close enough )which is on Van.Island. While Vancouver has a mild climate, I would not want to live there due to the size of the city and the increasing crime rate, including shootings. Still, some people really do seem to like the place, and I can't speak to it fully until I've had the chance to visit sometime soon.

And WOW, did we EVER get a windstorm tonight! Out of nowhere, 75km/hr winds whipped up from the north, blasting everything on the deck and nearly causing my carefully-constructed anti-cat bird saving structure to flip through the living room window. Thankfully, the plastic sheets were quite heavy to begin with and landed on the deck, only cracking the corner of one of them. T'was scary though, so have the wind rise to such a howl that it made the chimney moan like a tortured beast... and to die down again after less than half an hour. Weird weather, reminded me slightly of the time when Niagara was hit by a small twister back in the nineties... though today the sky didn't turn green and the rain didn't blast down as though from God's pressure cleaner.

March 3 - RAID Failure

The day off today was pretty good, all told. An order from Monoprice.com arrived today, so I was able to wire up my ancient laser printer finally, along with replacing the power cable for the Canon Pixma printer. While easy to find online, neither of these specialized cables are stocked by local PC retailers, so I was relieved I found them online, cheaply too. Now that I have printing capability again, I feel an odd sense of relief, especially since I can't print things at work and the local Staples charges an indecent amount for printing things like PDF docs... I mean, really, $0.49 per page for colour? Sheesh!

I also managed, after exhaustive testing, to fix my Blue Frankenstein of a computer. After running down the list of possible reasons for it NOT wanting to boot, it turns out my paranoia from years ago has paid off. Years ago after losing several former PC's to drive failure, I had installed a pair of redundant hard drives in THIS computer that mirrored each other's data - so if one went wacky, then the other would still work. Turns out that WAS the case, and unplugging one of the drives( the second choice )let the system boot happily. Which meant I spent the rest of the evening backing up all the recent data from the remaining drive to other external sources, just in case... you can't be too careful. I was really, really happy that the RAID setup worked so well, and will have to figure out a way to replace the drive ASAP - since it's a Seagate, it may STILL be under warranty. Though they recently went from 5 years to only 3, it's still best in the industry, despite recent concerns about some of their drives experiencing far higher failure rates than is acceptable for consumers.

March 4 - Talking Taxes

For those of you who are anxious about doing your taxes, take heart: aside from EasyTax at MMart, there are a ton of other solutions to juggling those numbers to take form in your favour. One I prefer over all others is QuickTax.ca, which has the added bonus of being linked to from most major banks for an additional 20% off... which means you can do your own taxes online for less than $20.00. That's assuming that your tax situation is not too complex and doesn't involve things like owning your own business or long-distance trucking mileage. And is it mileage if you live in a country that measures things in metric, like Canada? Wouldn't it be 'klickage' ? Nevermind... that's straying back into Made Up Wordz territory.

Not that I advocate making up words will-nilly, or mashing a few together to make a new one. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority in this regard, as evidenced by the newest media ads for the Apple iPhone... "The Funnest iPhone Ever!" - made me want to write stacks of angry letters using famous english grade-school teachers as pseudonyms. This person has also taken exception to the slow degradation of the language, much like my posting last week for Feb 23rd. Language has to evolve, but I would rather not see it delve into offshoots like Ebonics or the unusual cross-cultural effort of Esperanto, the most popular of the constructed languages to date. I also snuck a look at Sindarin, which is one of several fantasy languages derived from Tolkein's works which has several online translators and thousands of fluent speakers worldwide.

But you can't order a hamburger at your local Wendy's in it... heck, I've still got to get to the point where I can do that in french, Italian or Spanish. One of many things to do when I find the time.

March 5 - Thursday in Brief

Having grown up with syndicated reruns of the old Star Trek series, I was pleased to hear that a new 'reboot' of the show was happening. The most recent trailer looks amazing, though it obviously tries to break new ground and steer away from the campy elements of the original series.

Merchandising has always been a core part of Star Trek, though I wonder why they've recently decided to branch out into... colognes?

I miss my Babylon 5.... but things like the new Battlestar Galactica reboot have been amazing. Many fans have wondered though: what would the old series title sequence have looked like with the new cast?

March 6 - Movie Time

Today Watchmen was released in theatres, and though I really want to see it, I just can't bear to share the same space as the Massed Public Hordes for over 2 hours. Reviews of the film at RottenTomatoes.com are mixed, with the main complaints being that it's "too complex" and "slavish to the original material" - neither of which are bad things in my book.

Related to that, I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in bits and pieces over the last few months, and was disappointed to hear that tonight's ratings were rather low. Yet i09.com has posted the obvious answer: everyone was out watching Watchmen. Which is a cool way of putting it, actually...

Well, that's it for a Friday. Not much to do out here in Langford on one's ownsome, though I am working on seeing some of my Victoria friends more regularly come the spring. Perhaps I will be able to take up a few more outdoor hobbies come the summer as well, as I do miss my biking and the Galloping Goose Trail is close by.

March 7 - Da Weekend

Not so bad a Saturday, really... except it snowed four separate times today. Typical Victoria weather, changeable three times or more an hour. Snowing, then sunny skies, then snowing again; we're talking heavy clouds and masses of white drifting flakes that fortunately did little more than melt when they hit the ground.

After work today I did something different: I went out to a pub just down the street - it has a striking home page here. Christie's Carriage House Pub has been around for over a century, though the building was only turned into a pub in the late 80's. It was quite crowded when I arrived, as there was a hockey game of some kind on - I didn't bother to pay much attention, as is my wont. Instead, I dug into a turkey sandwich with fries and gravy, with two pints of Guinness to wash it down over the course of several hours as I read through Pierre Burton's The Joy Of Writing, which I've never managed( until now )to actually open and read through. It was quite enlightening, moreso as I had no idea of the sheer volume that people could produce with only ancient typewriters, pencils and steno pads. While not containing any revelations about the craft, it did emphasize to me the importance of perseverance, hard work and finding one's own style, as well as reading as much of the work of other good authors as possible.

Which also begs the question of motivation. Working as I have been for the last while has left me little energy, feeling the way I do, to put towards other things. I find myself in dire need of decompression / de-stress time, and my creative processes of late have been stretched in just trying to come to the blog each week with something new aside from purchasing new socks.

March 8 - Sunny Sunday at last!

I spent most of the afternoon attending to my Blue Frankenstein PC, backing up data to various drives before reworking the interior setup - added a video card so I can run 2 monitors at once, as well as ensuring my now-unmirrored main drive was hooked up a little differently to make room for the video card. I am surprised that now the main bottleneck in my storage setup is speed: having a sizable external drive is great, but with standard USB 2.0 speeds, it takes hours to copy massive amounts of data. One of my external drives does have an eSata connector, so I think that I will invest in some cabling to take advantage of that fairly soon - I hate waiting to copy data around.

Nice to see the sun, despite the cold outside. Sitting in the rear family room it's amazing just to bask in the evening sunshine and watch the sunset reflect on the clouds behind the hills to the northwest. The colours it creates on the lake are incredible, and I'll post some pictures soon.


Lastly: I am narrowing down possibilities in regards to my health issues, thankfully. My doctor has been very attentive, and together we've eliminated( pun intended )quite a few avenues and continue to do so with various tests. Nothing concrete yet, but allergies to gluten are a possibility, as are several other sources of indigestion, including IBS - more as I find out solid medical facts from tests.

Birds, Bats and Blammo

Ducks on a lake in winter... have to love that! A total lack of snow!


Feb 23 - Wurdz

This week's favourite invented phrase: Doom Loop... which was not to be found in the Urban Dictionary.

Everyone has words they've invented, private things and names they use for places, friends, things in general. Pet names, nicknames, joke names... the list goes on and on, the results of silliness, odd events or deeds or just boredom. Some sites celebrate the inevitable evolution of the English language, while others lament the loss of 'The King's English' over time. Myself, knowing that English is an ever-evolving language, wonder at how different today's version will be in a century, when words like l33t and lifequake have been part of the lexicon for a few decades. Will it rawk? We'll see.

Not much going on this week for me, outside of work... things are very busy, and I am out of the house for about 10 hours a day. While this means I do get to sleep in past 8am, the end of the day tends to see me dragging from lack of energy and the demands of the job. So if I want to get anything accomplished, it has to be in the mornings, or wait until one of my rare days off... like Sundays, which so far have all vanished all too quickly, even without any recent road trips.

Feb 24 - Southern Trawl

Brian's on a trip to New Orleans, which sounds like a blast... now that they've rebuilt somewhat. I saw a TV special today about the city and the results of Katrina's assault on it in 2005, which had a large segment on the Superdome and how it successfully sheltered 30,000 people from the storm's fury. Some of them have posted their stories about conditions inside the dome during the storm, which makes for some intense reading. I recall that a former editor of mine from university took a road trip down to N'orleans back in the early 90's, and said the thing that stuck with him most were the dozens of bullet-ridden road signs on the local roadways in the state of Louisiana. Scary.

All of which means Brian probably hasn't checked up on BaconToday.com, which is my weekly bacon blog offering. BaconToday has a cornucopia of bacony goodness, so grease up and dive into the taste!

Feb 25 - Fire logs

I've been burning fire logs in the fireplace here for a few weeks now, and in general they're great: just sawdust and petroleum wax that give off a steady flame over the space of a few hours.

Unless they break in half and flare up - whoa!

I'd bought a new style of log, called 'Crackling logs' that contained tiny bits of whatnot to make the log 'crackle' like a regular tree log would, or so I thought. Instead, the log refused to burn like the others did, becoming a sullen spongy mass of embers that gave off a lot of smoke and very little flame, taking FAR longer to burn than I had thought. After far too long, the log sagged in the middle and then the whole thing burst into a brilliant conflagration - a furnace-like flare of flame! I feared for the structure of the chimney and raced to grab the fire extinguisher, but fortunately the flames only lasted a minute or so... after that I was able to open the glass doors and spread the flaring bits apart from each other to reduce the overall intensity. NOT a good feeling, that, watching this huge fire appear from nowhere and feeling hot enough to melt its way through the fireplace. Sheesh!!!

I enjoyed the fireplaces that I had when I was living in Fonthill: a pair of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling wood-burning fireplaces that really brought home the ancient thrill of taming fire, in the comfort of your home.

But what about if things went really south? As in, your firelog exploded with the force of a nuclear weapon? What would be the effects?

Thanks to this app available for GoogleMaps, you can now look up any place in the world, and see what effects dropping a nuclear weapon( or even an asteroid )on it would have. Having lived next to the power-generating Niagara Falls for most of my life, I always wondered if it was a priority target on somebody's list, and what would happen if a nuke did go off there... guess it's the post-apocalyptic g33k in me, but books like After The Bomb and Wasteland are always on my shelves for flip-throughs every few years. Plus, shows like Jericho and The Sarah Connor Chronicles also catch my eye year to year...

Feb 26 - Bat-Dates

Today I shut down or suspended whatever online dating accounts I had, after some few weeks of thought. Considering that I've had some of those accounts for years with no noticeable results, I'm going to be spending my time better elsewhere, not to mention saving the fees from the few sites that charge for the privilege. I have to say that overall, I've been disappointed with the sites, as few people respond to even the politest of emails, and the ones that contact me are for the most part not people I would be interested in even casually. So that says I am either far too picky, or like most, simply have not found 'the right person' ... if there is such a one. Compromise? Not in the cards. Yet.

Along the lines of making you laugh, the new animated Batman: The Brave & The Bold is a great show for simply entertaining you. Hearkening back to the visual style of the 1960's Batman, this new animated series aims to entertain without the camp and without getting too 'dark' with its story. From the two episode's I've seen so far, it does a fine job and is eminently watchable.

Feb 27 - Taxing my time

Work today was insane... I'm fine working by myself, but when the taxes are piling up, it becomes almost impossible to do everything. Phone calls and other customers poke at me like hot knives while trying to get through a tax file, each of which takes about fifteen minutes to complete and send in. The next two weeks are going to be much of the same, as this is the time of the year when everyone's T4's are arriving in the mail. So that means as soon as they do, they run in to get the cash. Sadly, not everyone will get a cash return... depending on how much a person paid in taxes during the year, combined with their deductions and credits, some folk may still owe $ to the government. Having to explain this to people reminds me of digging a tunnel in concrete with an old spoon... difficult, dangerous and time-consuming.

Feb 28 - Get Busy Finding

Apparently one can't find everything online... eBay let me down in my search for a cable for my monster-sized laser printer, as did all my usual( and some un-usual )tech shopping sites. So before work today I stopped in at Boomer's computers in Victoria... and was amazed! Barely 60 seconds after I stepped in the door, I had the cable in hand... for five bucks, no less! I had envisioned having to call up every computer store on Vancouver Island, but this astounded me... like pulling a copy of Action Comics #1 out of a pile of used comics at the local shop.

Now that I live out in Langford, I find myself wanting to go and visit downtown Victoria a little less, which is odd, as I really haven't take a day to simply wander around the many great shops there are there. Perhaps when the weather is warmer I'll devote a precious day off to doing just that, stopping in at one or two of the non-franchised cafes there for lunch. Hopefully by then some of my friends here will have some free time as well, though it seems I've managed to pick a fairly busy bunch.

Which is pretty much the same story back in Niagara: everyone gets busy, weeks or months go by and suddenly you realise the last time you saw a few folk was at a Christmas get-together last year... and it's now getting closer to Christmas again. Being busy stinks, sometimes.

March 1st - For da 'boids

Birdfeeders: source of inexpensive entertainment, food and ...

Deathtraps.

Seems that a neighbourhood cat has discovered that our new birdfeeder on the back deck is a great way to feed itself. I saw the grey blur miss two birds by inches this morning, which upset my mom as she wants to watch birds feeding, not being fed upon. So I spent several hours devising a blocking defence and setting it up on the deck - basically a see-through plastic shield to prevent the cat from coming up the back steps to launch itself at the birds at the top. I have to say I am rather proud of it, as the setup doesn't block the view from inside, is weatherproof and still allows people to use the back stairs easily if necessary. I finished just as rainclouds moved in and soaked things thoroughly.

I watched an episode of Total Drama Action tonight, basically season 2 of Total Drama Island from 2007 which I enjoyed immensely. The writing is quirky, the characters are diverse and it manages to be funny at the right times... unlike the animated Clone Wars series, which five minutes in I was tempted to mute and make up my own dialogue. The narrator for the series easily has one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard. Apart from that, the animation itself is excellent - there was a trans-atmospheric battle that had spectacular visuals and effects, but those can't save the show from rather mediocre writing or plots.

I also watched Who Killed the Electric Car? on CBC's The Passionate Eye, which had many eye-opening revelations about how GM's EV-1 program was scrapped as of June 2003. The fact that the cars needed so little maintenance( and thus lost profits for things like oil changes )scared both car companies and oil companies alike, who feared for their profit margins. I also discovered that the many trolley networks that cities in the 50's had were scrapped by automakers to pave the way for expensive fuel-guzzling fleets of buses... with large profits for the automakers again. It was an enlightening hour, and I highly suggest finding it online for a watch-through. Edutainment!


Still haven't had time to get some pictures of the place yet, but I am hoping next week to get a few into the blog. Everything is basically to rights since the move a month ago, and is quite livable.

Odd, Old and Oscars

I'm still on the fence about canceling my Vonage phone, but for now I'll keep it. Best times to call me are 11-1pm or 11pm-1am, EST... before or after my usual work times. All on that for now.


Feb 16 - Love those eyes...

Seems all that is on the news these days is doom and gloom about the economy. Yet it appears that some saw it coming... have a look at this video by a fellow named Peter Schiff. It dovetails nicely into some info I discovered about similarities between the current crisis and what happened in Japan in the late 90's... eerie similarities there, actually.

Having moved out to BC, then from Victoria to Langford in the West Communities, I've yet again struck a blow against expanding my social circles here. Not that I had a large one to begin with, after a year here, but being dependant on a vehicle or bus to 'ride into town' to socialize was not part of my original plan... but so be it. One never knows what the future will bring, even if you are Peter Schiff, yet we have to make plans and adjust as best we can. While I enjoyed riding my bike to work last year, this year since I'm not feeling so good, perhaps it's best to limit my rides to recreation for now. Of course, I could always sign up for one of these seminars...

Who knows? If I ever ran across someone with eyes like Tilda Swinton, who was the White Queen in The Chronicles of Narnia, I might just dive in and get lost. The future in an eyeblink...

Feb 17 - The End is in site...

A few years ago, I reprogrammed one of my routers to use OpenDNS, which is a simple way to surf the 'net faster - this bit explains it a little better than I could. I just reprogrammed one of my routers with OpenDNS this week, nothing like getting speedier 'net access... for free. Considering I've just upgraded to the fastest version of cable with Shaw.ca, things around here should be pretty speedy now.

Surprisingly, the economic slump has postponed the demise of dialup 'net access, whose budget price is very appealing when trying to figure out to save a buck.

This doesn't help those without internet access at work, like myself - the silicon highway doesn't exist for me, save for 'approved' sites such as 411.ca or other sites that make my job easier. Yet blocking sites like Facebook may not be such a good idea for businesses, overall, and while I admit that some people might abuse the privilege, not having 'net access at work these days is annoying to most.

Feb 18 - Growing up G33k...

Brian, this one is for you: Doctor Who... as an anime character. Animated, no less!

On the topic of Doctor Who, it brings back memories of the 70's, and all those TV shows that I grew up with. In addition to Doctor Who, there was The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica... and many more. There is an amazing picture here that one artist has created that immortalizes the best of these shows... I was impressed with the detail that was put into it!

Yet modern era technology has let us do things yet-unthought of back then.... take Google Earth, for example. Recently, they added seafloor data to the application... and one intrepid soul with FAR too much time on his hands was trawling through it when he made an amazing discovery. Is it true? We'll see.

Then again, we have some controversial ideas popping up regarding internet use, so who's to say things weren't better back when the quickest way to reach out and touch someone was a phone?

Feb 19 - Linkup at work?

Work is work, and of late is proving to be rather wearing. Tax season is ramping up, and being the only person at my branch means that my task-juggling skills are being stretched every day. While not physically taxing, the always-on all-day mental challenges have proven to be rather exhausting, though so far I've been up to the tasks at hand. I can say it's NOT boring, not that it ever was really...

Speaking of work, here's links to the sites for some of my friends, who put a LOT of hard work into 'em:

The Art of Brian Thomas Woods

Jinx The Black Cat - From Mike, plus Newt & John!

ImageryFusion.com - yay Pierre!

Also, thanks to Paulino for posting this link about credit balance scams... informative video, watch it and decide for yourself if you need it. Especially in this era of job insecurity.

Feb 20 - What are they thinking???

This week has been bacon-free, mainly because I blundered across this story... which while unrelated in terms of food still just plain old grossed me out. Though not as much as the receipies I found here, which should probably only be served around Halloween time. Except the brain food, of course!

Perhaps it falls under the category of Odd News, which I have always enjoyed, usually from the decades-old News of the Weird column that has appeared in many papers throughout the continent.

One little tidbit I picked up from a Mythbusters episode: just as helium can make your voice squeaky, other non-toxic gases can alter it the other way too. Neat!

Lastly, it seems I am not alone in changing my diet... Andy Walker recently had to remove coffee from his daily menu. Fortunately, I never took up the habit, along with drinking, smoking, or skydiving... so at least I can narrow down any health issues without those complicating factors.

Feb 21 - Waiting

I'm waiting for the Watchmen movie to come out March 6th, with bated breath. Until it does, I'll have to content myself with some amazing photo galleries, like this one. Plus, I just found out about this gem... the mini-comic from the Watchmen story, The Black Freighter, will be coming out as it's own DVD, voiced by Gerald Butler of 300 fame.

Having cable TV for the last few weeks has proved to be less of a temptation than I thought, overall. While I missed some shows like Mythbusters, or the Space Channel, in general I find myself flipping through the Shaw electronic Program Guide( love it, $2.99 a month! )for long minutes without finding anything I really want to give up my time in hour-long chunks for. I think what appeals to me about live TV is that I don't have to fiddle with loading a DVD... which says something about couch potato motivation. Still, watching Adam and Jamie test the ancient Chinese rocket-firing hwacha was amazing!

Feb 22 - Oscars

My first day off, and it's been most enjoyable though it's going far too fast. The sun came out for a few hours this afternoon, and that attracted a huge flock of robins to the front lawn in search of worms. Barely ten feet away through the windows of my living room, they were happily plucking wrigglers from the dirt before my eyes - I've never seen so many of them all at once. Tristan watched avidly too.

Watching the Oscars tonight as I wrote this blog, I was struck by how upbeat and non-ax-grinding they were compared to past years. With Hugh Jackman as an energetic host, plus various changes to the programs, the show tonight was a definite Feel Good Experience for the audience.


Well, another few hours whiled away whilst writing this web-blog... not too much happening this week, but I still hope you enjoyed it!

Logs, Love, Lighting

Just another week... thankfully though, we are well past the most depressing day of the year. Good news, that... now let me turn my sunlamp back on and bask in the bright light.


Feb 9th - BC is cool, so burn stuff

We used the wood-burning fireplace for the first time today, after the chimney sweep had been by earlier to ensure that everything was in working order. The fireplace is in a shared wall between two living rooms, with double glass doors on either side allowing both rooms to see the flames. A 3-hour fire log( just sawdust and wax )made a cheery blaze that lent a lovely flickering glow to the rooms for the evening, if not adding a whole lot of heat. No fan in the fireplace, kinda odd.

I also picked up some solar accent lights today to place outside, and looking back at them from later in the week, it makes all the difference outdoors. No longer is the front yard a black hole outside the window at night, but instead has lovely low-power lights leading down the front steps to the porch. Since they're solar, they cost nothing to run and come on automatically at dusk; time was, a pack of ten of these things would have run into the hundreds of dollars, but Home Depot had them on clearance for... can you guess? $15.00 a box. Amazing the way some tech advances, when you look at it.

Some odd things about BC: unlike the QEW and 400-series highways in ON, pedestrians and cyclists CAN use the highways( well, the designated shoulders )without penalty. It still makes me start when I see peds or cyclists slogging away at the side of the highway though; this site has some other differences that set BC apart from other provinces. But I must admit, the main routes here are FAR less congested than back in ON, as there is almost a total lack of large truck traffic on Vancouver Island. From what I have read, they mainly travel the roads in the very early mornings after catching the first ferry over from the mainland. They do tend to travel faster than the trucks in ON, which has led to some lively debate in recent years about making speed limiters mandatory - good, I say.

Feb 10th - Talking B-days...

Today was my sister's birthday, which like many in the last few years have had us celebrating it in absentia, as she has lived in AB for the last long while. As with all things, time changes your perceptions, including your perception of time. Where before dinner, presents and hours of celebration dominated with friends and family, later in life it really is the thought that counts, as people get busier and find that both time and space separate them from their loved ones. Be that as it may, modern tech tools like Skype allow family to see and hear each other over vast distances, which has proved a comfort in my life on many special occasions in the past few years. Still, being busy is a problem that means good communication is necessary to co-ordinate chats on special days like birthdays. Miss ya sis!

On the topic of conversations, I've noticed lately that many of mine tend to trail off; having a firm, upbeat conversational closer seems to be something I've lost my touch in the last year or so. Apart from 'getting in the last word' I've noticed that when dealing with customers, the start and middle of things are great, on any topic you choose... but the closer always ends up with 'enjoy the weather' or some other inane comment. How hard is this, really, I wonder? Does anyone else have closing issues?

Feb 11th - Laptop Organ Donors

Today was training day, which for me means getting paid NOT to stand at the counter or answer the phone. Instead, I spent time at another branch, learning how to be a trainer. Training to train, if you like, though I avoided any railway puns... showing unusual restraint for me, as it were.

Nothing exciting really, but there were a few things I learned that I hadn't thought about before, which was nice.

Lately, I've been browsing a textbook from the early 90's on Canadian business. Interestingly, it talks about the economic depression at the time and how it was affecting all aspects of Canadian business. Here it is 15 years later, and we are facing the same issues, where businesses have to become 'lean and mean' in order to survive. Again.

One neat bit of techno-fiddling today: I managed to network my Xbox and my new laptop. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but after some trial and error they are now on speaking terms. Which means I can use the Xbox to access media from my laptop's somewhat-generous drive and display it on the big-screen TV... neat stuff. Sometime in the future I will get around to replacing my old Blue Frankenstein with a modern Vista( or Windows 7 by that point )machine as a media server, but not just yet - things still aren't at the "Wow, that's so cheap I can't afford NOT to get it!" stage of hardware. Though I do have an unused license for Vista Home Ultimate sitting on the shelf, unused since my parent's old laptop bit the biscuit at Xmas 2007 - I've been donating / using parts from it for some time time since, including giving the downstairs neighbour's old laptop a much-needed RAM boost and overhaul. Glad to see the old parts making such a difference for someone after the fact.

Feb 12th - Sneeze on a Groundhog!

Since our group yesterday was so on the ball, I have today off: we got through 2 days worth of material, which I put down to all of us being managers, as well as the motivated, intelligent people that we were. Also that we didn't want to spend a second day cooped up inside; reminded me too much of a classroom.

After going out for a few things, I spent most of my day in my living room organizing. I went through my massive VHS tape piles and got rid of anything that I now had on DVD, which still left at least 2/3 of the pile to sort onto the shelves. I also swapped books around, loaded a lot of useful-but-unsightly gear into the cupboards and generally made the place tidy to look at - again.

A bit of news about the common cold: scientists have taken the first steps towards eliminating it from circulation. There IS hope for a cure after all... check back with this blog in 20 years for an update.

In the evening I finally managed to watch Groundhog Day - I picked up the Special Edition last year, and the extras have some great insights into the making of the film.

Feb 13th - Unlucky? Naaahhhh....

Sometimes events happen on a Friday the 13th, which makes them memorable and lends credence to the moniker of the date as unlucky. One such was only 3 years ago, when a massive snowstorm socked in Buffalo NY, causing then-president Bush to declare the area a 'major disaster' zone.

There is also the massive gathering of bikers in Port Dover annually on the first summer Friday the 13th of each year. Last June, over 150,000 bikers showed up, presumably behaving themselves enough to be welcome back next year. This is a similar event to the much bigger Daytona Beach Bike Week, which draws nearly half a million bikers every March to the FL city, and almost always results in a dozen deaths and many injuries from such a huge crowd. Ten years ago, my family visited Daytona during the equally crowded NASCAR race season, and it was an eye opener. Ten-lane-wide main city streets were so jammed with cars that people were driving on shoulders and sidewalks just to get anywhere, much like Marge Simpson did with her Canyonero super 4WD in one episode. Crazy, crazy times that the locals say they leave town every year to avoid the incredible noise and riot-like conditions. Yeesh.

Feb 14th - Love Your Day

I wore a red shirt to work today, totally oblivious( on a conscious level )to the colour significance... but many people were amused to see red, so to speak, given today's date. I even received some chocolate from one of the regulars, which was nice: the candies were even in the shape of little hearts. Cute.

Valentine's Day is celebrated( or not )in various ways around the world. One interpretation I liked is from Sweden, where it is called Ystävänpäivä or "Friend's Day" where the idea is to celebrate friendship in addition to your family and loved ones. Some places like Saudi Arabia have banned the holiday, which has only led to a thriving black market in roses and chocolates. Candy heart smuggling, anyone?

While surfing around today for various Valentines-related sites( rejecting the sappy, stupid and commercial dropped the total substantially )there was a site that caught my eye: The Experience Project. This is a site where people share, well, their life experiences. It was interesting to browse the various groups, though you may be wondering by now how it relates to Valentine's Day.

Feb 15th - Not a minivan...

I went over to the local Winner's today to pick up a table I had reserved, one that will fit perfectly overtop my massively unsightly colour laser printer. Sadly, the darn thing is of such a size that it would not fit into my car: despite my best efforts, I had to admit defeat or risk damaging the vehicle. So I hauled it back into the store and decided to come back on Tuesday, with either a rental van or my two-wheeled hand truck to haul it the 1.2 km back to my place... out of spite. I really hate it when my spatial skills don't do the trick, as I can almost always eyeball something and tell if it would fit into my car. Well, I could with the old '94 Grand Am, but it had bigger doors and more space inside. I'll put this one down to my inexperience with the newer '08 Mazda 3, for which today counts as a big xp dollop. We had company over today too, which was fun.

Aside: For lack of a physical paper, I've taken to reading up on events with The Toronto Star online. For years, we used to get the paper in the morning, which resulted in having to clean the table of rubbed ink every few weeks. Having a physical paper in hand, reading it over breakfast, was always both relaxing and informative... not to mention looking forward to the comics section each day.

For now though, I will leave you with a picture from our back deck here in Langford, one that I think expresses how much I hope that this new place will help greatly reduce my stress levels and improve my health. Enjoy.



Since I've not ended on a quote before, it's about time: "In the end, it is the person you become, not the things you have achieved, that is the most important." -Les Brown

Comments, Cable and Cars

As you may guess, it's not easy coming up with New Stuff every week... kind of like when your favourite TV show comes up with a 'Clip Episode' that reuses a ton of stuff from the past season to make up for the fact that they've either run out of money or ideas, or both. So far in this blog, neither seems likely... heck, I'd LOVE to be paid for writing this. Some Ideas have already been forwarded... any more?


Feb 2nd - The Day After Groundhogs

I like Groundhog Day, both the event and the film starring Bill Murray. There's just something about the film that speaks to me, about an imperfect guy who gets the chance( once he recognizes it )to become the person he's always wanted to be, through simple trial and error. Though there are no consequences to his actions, as he repeats his day over and over, he doesn't turn to violence but instead turns outward to help others, as well as inward to better himself. A lovely thought, and too rare... this site gets into some great detail about the messages of the film. Though I wonder if Bill Murray's other film with groundhog cousins in it may illustrate that most folk don't know there's a difference between the little furballs.

Each year around this time, I try to re-watch the film, but this year it will have to wait until later in the week - just too busy and too tired with the move. There's always something to unpack, move around or put on a list to purchase when its discovered that we're out or simply don't have it, like phone cords or the like.

This has to do with the whole darkness / winter thing that people go through every year: Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD for short. Unless you're a Gremlin, bright lights usually help keep folk from feeling down. I'm lucky in that my workplace faces towards the west, so I get light all day long and even a peek at sunset through the masses of windows that enclose my corner-built branch. Sunshine! Not the film either, which I just bought this week - who wouldn't want to get within hugging distance of a star?

Feb 3rd - Russian Empire

The Death Star - who wouldn't want to have the keys to this Ultimate Weapon, floating in orbit just waiting to blast a planet or two into dust? Uninhabited planets, of course! I've always wondered just how much it would cost to construct. Now, someone has come up with a dollar figure, based on the materials contained in the moon-sized battlestation - can you guess how many times the current U.S. National Debt the figure is?

On a related note: Darth Vader helmets... as re-imagined by top artists, on display at the Warhol Museum.

The Russians know a thing or two about breakfast, as well as how to build really big things - maybe someone should have suggested a Death Star to them in the 70's ? The gigantic construction in the photos is known as the Woodpecker, an early-warning radar system developed during the Cold War that could see missiles over the horizon. It got its name from the tapping sound it made on radio sets all over the world at certain frequencies. Thankfully, it was shut down and abandoned decades ago... leaving the giant metal skeletons to rust slowly in obscurity.

Feb 4th - Car Confidence

My parents had been looking at perhaps getting a new vehicle this week, a Mazda 5, as my mother has been having trouble getting out of our Mazda 3 lately, due to several medical reasons. They had been dealing with Pacific Mazda in Victoria, the same ones that they had purchased their current car from. Sadly, even given the current economic climate, the salesfolk at Pacific did not proceed with my parent's best interests in mind... which I deduced from what they had told me up to this point. So, I went in today in the morning to sit in on their appointment, and was rather annoyed with the indifference and vagueness of the sales pitch - it was as though the staff expected to spout off a few numbers and then watch as my parents signed on the dotted line, dazzled by the opportunity they were being given to throw their money at the dealer in large wads.

Needless to say, the sale didn't happen, and after work today I went into detail with my parents about how a lot of the car sales industry works, relating it to the techniques and information presented by Pacific to them this past week. My favourite was the 'Flow Chart', a vague collection of scribbled half-numbers in circles joined by lines criss-crossing the page - supposedly outlining the value of their trade-in, package options and 'discounts' being offered. My parents won't be going back to Pacific except for service, as they are the only Mazda dealer for fifty km in any direction, which likely explains their 'Only Game In Town' attitude they took with their sales pitch. I know it's a game, and that the rules are subtle... but neither side should ever assume the other are ignorant of ANY common sense.

Feb 5th - The Cable Returns.. or re-runs?

Moving on towards the end of the week... I will be SO glad to get a day off work, at home...

The cable guy was at out new place this week, and gave us good news: the signal into the house is plenty strong enough to support all the TV's in the place, plus a few more if needed. This can be an issue depending on the quality of the signal in your neighbourhood, as happened to us in Fonthill, where an extra line( at no charge )had to be run in to ensure a stable signal for all the outlets in use. This bodes well for fast internet speeds, assuming things stay working, which they haven't so far.

Now that I have cable again, I find myself reluctant to watch TV - odd, but I consider it mostly a waste of my time now. Considering I am out of the house for at least ten hours a day now, my time is becoming even more valuable, especially as work is getting busier with tax season and the ton of daily details that being a manager entails.

Still, there are a few shows I want to catch up on: BSG, which is in its final season & final episodes right now, plus The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which continues to surprise me with the quality of its writing as well as production values. The Terminator franchise, which is releasing Terminator: Salvation this summer, has often made me wonder about the intricacies of time travel. Someone has helpfully looked into how Skynet could make better use of its resources in killing John Connor than sending back machines shotgun-style to be mangled in various desperately-contrived ways. So, assuming that Skynet is listening, we're all doomed....

Feb 6th - Smiling... ack! Zombies!

The evening piled on, with a nice ending: my last customer of the night, a regular, gushed at how she loved coming to my branch because I was so efficient, friendly and professional. When I joked she should tell others, she surprised me by grabbing a comment card and stating firmly that she would send it in Monday with glowing comments. Needless to say, after having had several other customers( bad apples all )send in not-so-great cards, this response left me with a happy grin until I left for the night.

Apparently other people wanted to leave people with a smile a few weeks ago in Texas: hackers altered a few road signs to produce amusing messages. Go have a look. Makes me long for the days when things were hacked for the fun and the challenge, and not in order to make money, cause disruptions for millions of people or to plain old cause damage.

Feb 7th - Books I've never read

An interesting place to visit is Privacyworld.com. They have a ton of useful info about keeping YOUR info safe, as well as educating yourself. Though I am very well-versed on keeping my info private( it took someone ten years recently to find me again! )there were things I didn't know there. Worth a look!

Tonight, I looked through my collection for that rare bird: a book I've never read yet owned forever. The result? The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley, which won the Newberry Award in 1985. Apparently I've had the book since around that time but never got around to reading it, which amazes me - looking over my collection, I can recount at a glance when I've last read almost every one of them. Still, there are still a few that I haven't read, or finished reading.

Makes me wonder where the nearest library is around here...

Feb 8th - Day off? Work 8 hrs at home!

I managed to sleep in today, and it felt great. Though this house is not perched in a sunny spot, it has two huge skylights in the roof, one of which is in the main bathroom. Sunshine splashing, soon enough....

After spending all day in my living room, I had all both the couches and the chair cleared off, and all the electronics working properly. The TV is hooked up, the DVD players work, and the surround system sounds great. After long experience organizing masses of wires, I have it down to a fine, if slow, art - now that it's all in place, I can use any piece of media and have it displayed on the TV, with the option of the sound going to the surround or just headphones. Once I have the rest of the room to rights, I'll be able to enjoy the room for any form of entertainment... even relaxing, by gosh!

The only thing that gave me trouble today was configuring the wireless internet connections. This is always a tricky business, and for the entire week I have had trouble with things interfering with each other. There are a total of four routers now sitting on top of my shelves, and after today they're finally programmed to play nice with each other - one for the downstairs tenant, one for my parents, a faster 'N' version for me, and a non-wireless one for my VOIP Vonage phone. Not for the faint of heart, that.

Good news about my own cable modem too: it's not dead, just not programmed for the new place. Whew!

Looking around as I write this blog late Sunday night, I have to say I am pleased with my setup, moreso than at my May St address. Here, I have room for my entire 3-pc couch set, surrounded by shelves at a good distance without crowding, plus a nice see-through wood burning fireplace. The room is sunken, and paneled on the ceiling with wood, with large windows at the front. It is a calm, relaxing room and I am looking forward to spending a lot of quality 'me time' in it... I don't get enough of that.


Comments, we had comments last week - yay! Well, one was more of a personals ad / sticky note, but the others were good - Trevor, I will email you, and Anonymous: The story proceeds... slowly. Thanks for asking!

Moving, Movies and May St

Tuesdays... what happened to updating these things Sunday nights? Well, maybe next week... I have a few more things to add to the blog, which I will do tonight - I wanted to get it posted today, so here you are:

Jan 25 - Tensity

I've been trying something different at work, to see if I can change my daily stress levels around. I've made the effort to smile and make small talk with every customer who comes in, moreso than usual, to see if the level of Friendly can be raised - for the most part, it seems to be working. This is different from the false cheer that I can't stand when I deal with some in the customer service industry, that gets turned on and off like a spigot - I'm making the honest effort to be nice and jovial despite being tired, cranky and stressed for the last few weeks. So far, it seems to be working, as I've enjoyed my time at work a lot more than I thought, even though I work alone every day.

Not that there's a lot wrong with that, really. I suppose if I was a slob, I could leave the place a mess out of sight of the customers, or not wear deodorant, or do a ton of other things that would annoy co-workers, if I had any right now. Instead, I enjoy the freedom of keeping tabs only on myself, not having to put up with other's habits, and allowing the occasional gaseous expulsion to waft free. Which has been happening far more often of late, thanks to one of these before every meal. Digestively snap.

Jan 26 - Snopes, you say?

Bacon: now for dessert... on chocolate chip cookies! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Speaking about fattening... well, not really, but I couldn't quickly think of a way to transition from bacon to internet scams; did I mention I am tired? Anyway, everyone receives emails, often daily, about things that sound too good to be true: scams, offers, spam, and urban legends all clog up email inboxes, not to mention those annoying chain letter emails... If you tire of these things, just go have a look at Snopes.com to see if what you suspect is true, that the sender( if a stranger )is trying to scam you or a friend( if they are known to you )is passing along something they really shouldn't. Every known spam or scam on the 'net is on Snopes, which makes it a GREAT resource to tell Aunt Bertha about next time she fowards you a 'warning' about gangs tossing shoes onto telephone lines in YOUR area... :-)

Jan 27 - Green

Green is the way to go these days in all things... which is great, as it also happens to be my favourite colour. Nowadays, David Suzuki is feeling like he's part of the mainstream, as the rest of the world is finally waking up to the message he's been preaching for the last few decades. Looking around the globe, there are some fine examples of green architecture out there, quite aside from the R2000 home program started in the 1980's and current market trends towards ultra-green residential housing. Though what a hand-crafted wooden iPod housing really has to do with green homes is anybody's guess.

It also occurred to me that there's an opportunity for a major spokesperson for environmental causes to step forth and take up the flag. One whose very appearance both speaks for the difficult task of protecting the planet, and the consequences of not doing so. I am speaking of a fictional character, one who has a long history in the comic industry, as well as other mediums:

The Hulk. He's literally green, and gets angry...with polluters. Perfect fit, no?

Jan 28 - Comics and Tigers

Calvin and Hobbes. Who among us DIDN'T read this fantastic comic strip in its heyday, and mourn it's sudden demise by Bill Watterson's decision to just stop? Well, for all of us out there who still wish for some Wit of Calvin's, I present to you: 25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips - not perhaps THE Greatest Strips, but certainly some of the very best. You decide.

Which leads me back to The Far Side... did the general public really understand that comic? It was so far out there in terms of funny for its time that it made Peanuts look like the scribblings of children... though considering it WAS a comic, maybe that's a compliment. I do know the Far Side Halloween TV Special was WAY out there, but it was great to see those out-there comic panels come to life... creepy, distorted, surrealistic-in-some-way life at that. Gary Larson, we miss you and Bill Waterson both.

Of Fumes and Final Thoughts: Unfortunately, I had to go back to the old apartment tonight to finish cleaning the oven, which was the only thing that had to be done again - I'm not one for using Easy Off due to the fumes, but in this case the landlord insisted. At least he sprayed it in the morning so it had all day to work, as well as for the fumes to( mostly )clear.

Jan 29 - More on Moving

The unpacking goes well, coming along apace. I do some in the mornings, then more as I find the energy after work. My mom, though she is limited in mobility and has other major health issues, has been great as she plugs away steadily at the work - most of the rest of the house is already put to rights.

I suppose I should talk a little about the place: it's on the shore of Langford Lake, about ten minutes north of Victoria. Langford itself is a bustling place, with a lot of new construction and a ton of things going for it, with all the amenities including a huge 'power center' for shopping in addition to a vibrant downtown.

The house itself is a large backsplit, nestled down away from the road tucked between neighbouring properties and so sheltered from noise and weather both. The lower level is given over to another apartment, whose occupants we've met - friendly, quiet and accommodating folks. The upper level is more than spacious, with a giant kitchen flanked by a living room and dining room. The front has a sunken living room for my use, that has to be seen to be believed - pictures coming soon. There are two bedrooms, plus a master bedroom, two bathrooms( one of which with a massive skylight )main floor laundry, double garage... and a hot tub on the rear deck that faces the lake - what a view! All of this means plenty of space for my stuff, as well as privacy.

Jan 30 - Boxes Are Evil

Now that most of the boxes are either emptied or relegated to the Toss In Storage Pile, the place is looking mostly livable... except for my den / living room. I just haven't had the energy to get all the books onto the shelves, or do more than hook up the TV and the 'net routers to the cable connection. Which is odd in itself - the cable, that is. When I first attached MY cable modem earlier in the week, the blasted thing didn't work and still doesn't - naturally it's the one I bought, whose 1-year warranty expired two weeks ago. The one from my parent's place works fine, thankfully... and it's the one they're still renting, 'natch. *sigh* I swear electronics come with Warranty Suicide Chips.

While I am not exactly in the business of Evil Lair Decorating, there is something to be said for Evil on a Budget... which also segues into setting up a great Evil Lair. Yet what use would be an Evil Lair without superheroes to defend it against? Here is a list of the most popular superpowers that wannabe-heroes of today are wishing for. Strangely, being bulletproof is not high on most people's lists...?

And if you want to see something truly evil, have a look at this - "Roxanne" by the Police as sung to the tune generated by Microsoft's Songsmith program. Ouch, my bleeding ears! The horror!

Jan 31 - End of the Old

The month wrapped up in a blur today, which was even busier than yesterday. Again, I find it odd that I can go an hour without any customers, then five show up all within five minutes. There is no common thread I can discern, as they don't do it at lunch hour, or all get off the same bus, or show up just after picking up the kids from school... damned odd, but it keeps me on my toes.

Do you ever get the feeling that things are being recycled in Hollywood? Or in the entertainment world in general, mining old hits for new viewer ratings? While I usually deride such mediocre efforts, sometimes a few of these reworkings work out, like BSG and (hopefully) the upcoming The Prisoner too.

There are a few movies I am looking forward to seeing in the next few months: Coraline, of course - it's Neil Gaiman, why would you NOT see it?? Also the Transformers sequel, plus one I'd not heard of before this week with a catchy title: Monsters Vs Aliens - no word on a cameo by a Predator though.

Feb 1 - A New Month, a New Place

Sunday found me crawling around the new place, puttering and poking into odd boxes to find things. While I kept a numbered list of box contents, there are still quite a few things stuffed into various odd boxes and other places to try and find. I found myself in dire need of relaxation today, as the week has been simply exhausting with the move and the very very busy month-end at work. Fourteen hour days are no fun for a week, especially when time not spent earning a wage is spent hefting boxes around and cleaning. When was this even fun, I wonder? I know I enjoyed moving to Port Dalhousie, but after that things just became a chore... good thing I was able to do a lot more under my own power back then.

I went to my delayed company Christmas party this year, which was a subdued affair - since we had our budget cut in half, only two stores( plus me )were able to get together, compared to last year, when everyone met for dinner... darn economic crunch. We all met at Nautical Nellies, which is a steak and seafood place downtown which bills itself as "the Best restaurant in Victoria BC." The food was very good in decent portions, if a big pricey - similar to the Keg, which sits on a corner as well just a block down the road. It was nice, in a way, to just sit at a large table and talk with people, as I don't see much of any of them while working on my ownsome. I left after only a few hours, heading home in the rain as I was rather tired.

For those who like moving reading, I suggest Ebon Musings, where the author digs deep into the Bible for his own amusement much akin to the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If God is watching, I don't think He would be amused... but I know He WOULD want a word with His editor about doing a Revised Bible. Or maybe a Coles Notes version?


All for now - next update Sunday night, since I have Sundays off. For now.